Seattle’s capitalist class gathered last week in the fifth-floor ballroom of the $2 billion Pine St. convention center for the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual state-of-downtown shindig.. Mayor Katie Wilson, who playfully identified herself as a socialist, received a tepid—though hardly hostile— response as she defended higher taxes while bonding with the establishment camp on the need to improve public safety.
As they do every year, the DSA paired the event with a user-friendly report on the economic state of downtown, which they define as 13 distinct neighborhoods that stretch from SoDo to Lower Queen Anne and from the Chinatown/International District to the western blocks of Capitol Hill. The boosterish report had lots to brag about this year: An uptick in downtown visitors and daily foot traffic. An increase in occupied apartments, new units,, and new businesses. And a decrease in violent crime. One troubling footnote: A drop in new housing permits, the precursor to a construction and housing downturn.
Here’s something I found even more concerning. I got French Revolution vibes reading the DSA’s descriptions of who’s keeping downtown flush.
According to the group’s Downtown Seattle retail assessment, a 2025 snapshot of downtown consumers courtesy of DSA consultant Downtown Works and analytics from mapping software company Esri, there are five key demographics driving the downtown economy. They are: 1) Metro Renters (34.7 percent of downtown shoppers): “Young, educated, professionally ambitious, tech natives;” 2) Laptops & Lattes (21.1 percent): “Digitally connected, trend-conscious, experience-driven”; Urban Chic (19.8 percent): “Health-conscious, financially savvy, globally connected”; 4) Top-Tier (8.7 percent): “Affluent, cultured, service-oriented urban dwellers”; and 5) Trendsetters (6.1 percent): “Tech-savvy, health-minded, socially engaged.”
And while it’s a bit hard to tell the difference between thee five discrete groups, the Top-Tier crowd is specifically differentiated as hyper-wealthy. As in: “The pinnacle of affluence, earning more than three times the U.S. average household income and enjoying an average net worth exceeding $3 million.” This is as opposed to the Metro Renters, who are explicitly described as younger and who “Prefer generic and budget-friendly brands when shopping.”
Otherwise, the five categories, which read like they were written by AI, an intern, or both, seem indistinguishable. They are all educated, tech savvy, health conscious, environmentally conscious, and active. And the Urban Chic certainly don’t seem that different than the Top-Tier. “They indulge in the finer things—imported wines, organic foods, luxury cars and world travel. Equally at home in yoga studios, ski resorts and art galleries, these discerning consumers prize both wellness and worldly experiences.”
As I said, French Revolution vibes. For those who haven’t seen Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s early-20th century sci-fi masterpiece about a mob-rule proletarian revolution, these descriptions are reminiscent of the super rich in the “Garden of Delights,” who live sequestered above the toiling city before the violent revolution. A more modern reference? Think of President Snow and Effie Trinket lounging in the Capitol in The Hunger Games.
I’m not one of those Gen Xers who’s nostalgic for the ’90s. In fact, I think Capitol Hill is more diverse and more exciting these days. However, as I float around the coffeehouses and bars on the Capitol Hill circuit, I’ve duly noted how dramatically the typical topics of conversation have changed over the years—from bohemian concerns such as politics, underground theater, and feminism to 9-to-5, normie talking points, like Monday’s stand-up meeting, investment strategies, and weddings.
In that context, the Urban Chic who “indulge in the finer things,” the Trendsetters “who crave the latest in branded fashion and tech” alongside the Top-Tier who “channel their disposable income into organic foods, fitness clubs, stylish wardrobes, travel, arts,” represent a red flag for a renter-majority city where half are cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing. A city that relies on rarefied lifestyles at this extreme is not sustainable.
In other words, it’s no wonder that, against the preference of Seattle’s business establishment, the majority of Seattle elected a socialist mayor this past November. The DSA members might not like Mayor Wilson’s pitch for progressive taxation, but if we don’t go that route, the inequality DSA inadvertently portrayed with its Marie Antoinette character sketches also paints a volatile picture. Howard Schultz may have been wise to flee Seattle last week.
Footnote: The DSA profiles don’t add up to 100 percent of downtown’s customer base. Evidently, shoppers who account for 10 percent of downtown customers are going unnamed.
View from the cheap cheap cheap cheap seats at Wednesday’s State of Downtown Seattle event.
By Erica C. Barnett
During the Downtown Seattle Association’s event celebrating the annual State of Downtown Seattle report yesterday, I got a kick out of Mayor Katie Wilson’s speech, in which she cheerfully defied expectations for political speeches at this glad-handing event. Wilson spoke after King County Executive Girmay Zahliay, who touted his three-day-a-week return-to-office mandate to surprisingly tepid applause.
It wasn’t that Wilson didn’t kowtow a bit to her corporate audience—saying, for example, that she wants to “keep our parks and public spaces welcoming and accessible to all” by “finally … putting people inside in large numbers.” People experiencing behavioral health crises “can make the people around them feel less safe,” Wilson said. “We have to acknowledge that, and we have to do more to make all of our streets and public spaces feel more welcoming for people of all incomes and backgrounds, whether they live downtown or tourists visiting our city for the first time.”
But Wilson also used the occasion to frame a commitment to good government as an explicitly left-wing priority. “As a progressive and as a socialist— as a progressive and as a socialist—I believe it’s very important for people to have faith in their government, and that means, among other things, being able to trust that it is a good and effective steward of our collective resources. We can’t be afraid to stop funding things that aren’t working well.” (Ahem.)
The keynote speaker, Atlantic writer Derek Thompson, was the co-author (along with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein), of Abundance—the book every pro-market urbanist in your life was urging you to read last year. Sounds like this was happening to Wilson, too, and she finally get around to reading it after the election.
It was pretty clear Wilson wasn’t as taken with the book as those who embraced it as a clever takedown of progressive dogma. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s because she saw through its paper-thin thesis—that if liberals would only become libertarians, we’d live in an age of abundant housing, transportation, consumer products, and energy.
“Some of you might know that in my prior career, in addition to being a community organizer, I was also a columnist who’s written for some of our local publications, and I’m sure that if I hadn’t been running for office last year, I would have found time to write my critical take on the abundance framework,” Wilson said. “Now I’m in a role where I have to muzzle myself a little bit, so I’m going to resist the temptation, having an audience with Derek, to give my Abundance TED Talk.”
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Instead, she said, she’d focus on some things she liked from the book, like the Urbanism 101 argument that NIMBY land-use restrictions prevent housing from being built.
“I have to say, I also really love the abundance vision of the world, in the not-far-off year of 2050, when we’ve achieved such abundance and productivity that the work week has been shortened to just a few days,” Wilson continued. “I do hope that 10 or so years from now, when AI has thoroughly disrupted the job market, and you start hearing a national rally cry for a 24-hour work week, that many of the far-sighted business leaders here today will hop on board that train.”
I haven’t reviewed Abundance, and I’ll try not to here, but the few minutes I saw of Thompson’s PowerPoint presentation before I had to leave for an event across were pretty misleading examples—tailored for a a roomful of business elites who are inclined to oppose taxes and believe in the awesome power of free markets.
Thompson extolled Lakewood, a suburb of L.A., as an example of the dense housing that can happen in the suburbs when government gets out of the way. (Lakewood, as a contrast to Petaluma in Northern California, is a central example in the book.) But Lakewood sits on an artificial oasis in what would otherwise be harsh, unwelcoming desert, and that oasis was made possible by government intervention in the early 20th century, when Los Angeles diverted water from farmland, destroying farmers’ livelihoods to build a city in an otherwise uninhabitable area. The conflict became known as the Water Wars.
Similarly, Thompson’s praise for Texas and its vast solar farms would be inspiring, except that Texas (where I’m from) has a notoriously unreliable power grid—a fact that the dominant Republicans in the state, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have falsely blamed on renewable energy. They’ve also been working steadily for the past decade to undermine wind and solar while doubling down on fossil-fuel subsidies—but never mind that, look at this slide of a solar farm!
Thompson brushed past another example of what he considers anti-“abundance” waste—the fact that affordable housing for low-income and formerly homeless people costs more to build than market rate apartments—by saying there was no reason for this to be the case. While it’s true that rules for affordable housing can increase costs, a bigger cost driver financing, which typically comes from many public and private sources and can take months or years to secure. Eliminating unnecessary regulation is important, but it’s only part of the story—and “abundance” advocates often simply ignore the reasons for some regulations, such as building codes and accessibility requirements.
As I said, I ducked out of Thompson’s talk after about two minutes (remember, I did read the book.*) But I hope the mayor will elaborate at some point—maybe on Seattle Nice!—about her reaction to the “libertarian, but make it pro-social” argument at the center of this bestseller.
* Which, by the way, also lacks any substantive class or racial analysis and conveniently elides the experience of poor people in the US and the rest of the world. Somebody’s gotta mine all those rare-earth metals, pose as AI sexbots, and pilot those “autonomous” delivery robots, after all, and it ain’t gonna be the elites who write bestselling books promising us a frictionless technotopia is right around the corner.
Channeling the original Wilsonian 14 Points, we offer 14 policy suggestions for incoming mayor Wilson.
By Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit
Seattle Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson doesn’t fit the old-school Seattle leftist stereotype personified by avenger socialists and NIMBYs who have historically aligned in a reactionary nativist coalition to oppose new housing. Wilson is too 21st century for such hokey self-righteousness. She’s more AOC than Bernie Bro—a nerd who examines the numbers, facts, and human consequences of city policies. We are confident her measured MO will guide her inspirational affordability agenda.
Channeling the original version of Wilsonianism, we hope the mayor-elect will consider the aspirational PubliCola agenda we’re laying out below with our 14-Point manifesto.
1. Reopen the Comprehensive Plan
The city’s comprehensive plan—the document that governs future growth in Seattle—was supposed to be finished in 2024, but got delayedagain and again by the torpid Harrell administration, which revised the plan repeatedly to lower (then slightly increase from that nadir) density limits. The city council still hasn’t passed the entire plan, pushing the zoning details off until 2026, along with the fate of urbanist amendments that died this year,.
A “docketing resolution” for next year will take up proposals to restore nine neighborhood centers—central nodes in neighborhoods where apartments will be allowed. (Harrell had city planners remove these higher-density areas from his proposal, so the city never fully studied them). Other proposals the council punted this year include the elimination of minimum parking requirements and a proposal to allow apartment buildings taller than six stories in neighborhood centers near frequent transit stops.
We think these changes are necessary and that the council should pass them as soon as possible next year. But since the comp plan is already delayed, why not take some more time with it and get the right plan for this urbanist moment?
Our modest—if aspirational—proposal: Wilson should send down legislation to allow allow six-story apartment buildings everywhere—and use her organizing chops to drum up support for the idea among renters, who’ve been the loudest voices opposing Harrell’s plan to preserve Seattle’s exclusionary status quo.
Maritza Rivera is going to fume that there hasn’t been enough “outreach and engagement” to single-family homeowners no matter what you do, so you might as well go big.
Oh, and while you’re at it? Allow bars and restaurants, not just small convenience and grocery stores, in every neighborhood—and let them stay open past 10pm!!—ECB
2. Funded Inclusionary Zoning (FIZ)
The problem with the noble policy of forcing developers to include affordable housing in any new multifamily development is that the projects often don’t pencil out. In turn, nothing gets built at all. Seattle’s mandatory housing affordability program (MHA), an inclusionary zoning mandate that requires developers to either include affordable units in new buildings or pay into a fund to support affordable housing construction, has actually contributed to a drop-off in new housing development.
Taking a cue from Portland, where a successful inclusionary zoning program recently saw projects worth hundreds of new units opt in during its first six months, Wilson should do the unthinkable: Give developers a property tax break to make the mandate pencil out. In other words, we shouldn’t tax things we want (affordable housing) by raising the cost of building it. We should encourage it by making affordable housing profitable to build.
Before you gasp at the idea of giving developers a tax break for building affordable housing, consider: We have a longstanding program, the state’s multifamily tax exemption (MFTE) program, that does just that. The problem is: That program isn’t a mandate. Developers don’t have to build affordable housing if they don’t want to.
FIZ, Funded Inclusionary Zoning, would combine the two affordable housing housing programs the city already relies on, MHA and MFTE—coupling the mandate to include affordable housing and the tax break to build it. —JF
3. The Night Mayor
The City’s Office of Economic Development has a Nightlife Business Services Advocate. Their job is to help after-dark venues like nightclubs and bars navigate licensing and compliance. Under Mayor Wilson, the role should be expanded beyond entertainment to support a full-blown evening ecosystem. Let’s have a well-staffed Office of the Night Mayor to promote, coordinate, and support a city that not only has vibrant nighttime businesses (tax breaks to help daytime businesses stay open later, please), but also weaves social services, night owl buses and shuttles, and vital commerce like drugstores into a thrumming evening environment that serves and supports everyone from night shift workers to 9-to-5ers who need to get shit done in the evening.
First initiative the Office of the Night Mayor: Identify murky streets and make them safer and more navigable with new lighting. Light it up, Mayor Wilson. —JF
4. Let CARE do their jobs
The city council is preparing to rubber-stamp the latest contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which has already been effectively approved by the five-member council majority who sit on the city’s contract negotiating team. We’d be happy—and impressed—to see the council reject and reopen the contract to add some real accountability measures in exchange for paying new officers $126,000 a year, but we’re not holding our breath.
One thing that can be reopened without a huge political lift, however, is the memorandum of understanding SPD signed with CARE—the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Team. While Harrell touted the fact that the new agreement will allow CARE to respond to low-risk 911 calls without a police escort, the MOU imposes new rules on the team that will make it hard to respond to most crisis calls.
Under the new rules, CARE responders can only respond to people who are physically outdoors, not inside a vehicle or any indoor space, and must abort the response effort if they see any indication a person has been using drugs or has committed any type of crime. They’re also banned from responding to encampments or if a person appears to be having a serious mental health crisis, among many other new restrictions.
These rules, which prohibit CARE from responding in most of the situations where they would be most useful, are untenable and will harm CARE’s ability to provide an alternative to sending armed officers to deal with people in crisis.
Given that the city just added $7 million to the budget to expand the CARE Team to 48 responders, it’s critical that the city allows them to do their jobs, even if the police union opposes it. —ECB
5. The Urban Pass
Inspired by NYC’s successful congestion pricing program (which has dramatically reduced car traffic, increased travel speeds, decreased greenhouse gas emissions, and is on track to raise $500 million its first year), Wilson should institute an Urban Pass for Seattle.
The Urban Pass would riff on the basic congestion pricing concept: Drivers could buy the pass for a monthly fee, which would give them discounted parking in the city’s 32 paid parking zones—districts that correspond to the highest-demand destinations in the city, such as Capitol Hill, Ballard, and South Lake Union.
Unlike NYC’s congestion pricing revenue, however, the money wouldn’t go to the transportation budget. Instead, it would fund multi-family housing in the low-density neighborhoods where many of the visitors to these high-demand areas live—including outside the city of Seattle. Clearly, the people who drive in to visit popular neighborhoods are fond of density too. So let’s give them some.
Adding more housing in low-density neighborhoods would also make frequent transit more sustainable in these parts of our city and the region. (As for the loss to the city on parking fees, SDOT should raise those base prices in concert with the Urban Pass discounts.) During her campaign, Wilson praised NYC’s congestion pricing model. Now that she’s in office, we hope she was in earnest. —JF
6. Make City Government Transparent Again
In recent years, we’ve seen the city moving to limit access to public information on every front, a trend that only accelerated during and after the pandemic. While the mayor can’t take direct action against individual public information officers who use their city positions to dissemble and mislead, she can set a tone of transparency with a few simple, immediate actions.
Start with the department that has the greatest aversion to transparency, SPD, by revising the 2017 city rule that the police department has been using to justify sitting on public disclosure requests for years. Under this rule, public disclosure officers are allowed to “group” multiple requests into a single request and to consider records requests from the same person or outlet consecutively rather than simultaneously. SPD has interpreted this rule to mean they are allowed to add any new requests from the same person into one giant mega-request, considering one sub-request at a time and putting any new requests at the back of the line. Instead of waiting for the Seattle Times to prevail in litigation (the Times is suing SPD over its anti-disclosure practices), just get rid of grouping altogether and make SPD’s public disclosure unit live up to its name.
Second: Hold open press briefings. Mike McGinn had his issues (and we reported on them), but one of his best moves was to periodically hold open meetings for the press with nothing specific on the agenda. Sitting at the table, rather than standing behind a rostrum, McGinn would take questions on just about any topic—a practice that not only made it possible for non-mainstream outlets to talk to the mayor directly on a regular basis, but that gave McGinn credibility as a mayor who valued transparency and was capable of answering detailed policy questions without a press staffer hovering nervously nearby to redirect and cut off questions. (The visually boring format also cut down on TV reporters with gotcha questions). The non-mainstream press will love you for having real conversations with us after four years of scripted responses, and the public will appreciate your commitment to open and transparent dialogue.
Third: Bring back the city directory! Former mayor Jenny Durkan removed the directory of city employees’ phone numbers and email addresses from the city’s website in July 2021, saying the underlying database was out of date. A promised “replacement solution” for this resource, which was the only place the public could access contact information for most people who work at the city, never materialized, and PubliCola has been periodically updating our own public database of city employees ever since. (It’s currently out of date because the city has been dragging its feet on my latest records request for the information, which I filed in June.). Restoring the directory—and bringing Seattle in line with state agencies and King County, whose employee directories are public—would signal transparency and bring back a resource many Seattle residents seeking to reach the right person at the city directly once found indispensable. —ECB
7. You’ve Heard of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). It’s Time for Parks and Schools Oriented Development—POD and SOD.
Since Erica is calling on Wilson to re-open the Comprehensive Plan (and rightfully so, given Mayor Harrell’s years of disinterest at best and outright sabotage at worst), let me propose two comp plan amendments: Upzones around parks and upzones around schools. The city’s highest-performing schools and most salubrious parks seem to serve more affluent and lower-density neighborhoods, meaning a privileged economic class has better access to them. Let’s make it so more people, including renters, can live near parks and schools by building more apartments nearby. —JF
8. Shady Zones
NIMBYs have successfully weaponized tree canopy as a tool for stopping new development.
For the record: Urbanists are pro-tree canopy. Instead of building single homes on single lots (which required sprawl and deforestation in the first place) urbanists are for building more densely, which by definition houses more people—leaving more room for greenery.
But as the Anthropocene accelerates into potential catastrophe, cities will need more sources of shade than tree canopy alone. YIMBYs should flip the script and weaponize development as shorthand for shade. To counter the shadows-are-bad mantra that has dominated building permit debates for decades, pro-development voices need to point out that the built environment can be a source of protection and cooling.
Ever find yourself choosing the shady side of the street on downtown sidewalks, seeking refuge in the cover of buildings? To fashion a truly resilient city, we need to start thinking in terms of awnings, walls, gazebos, park shelters, and yes, buildings themselves as vital cover from the extreme impacts of climate change.
We’re looking to Mayor Shady Wilson to add cooling infrastructure to the city’s resiliency agenda. —JF
9. Close the Sweeps Loophole
Another rule that’s ripe for revisiting is a city policy that has empowered Harrell’s Unified Care Team, a 116-member group of city employees that removes encampments, to sweep people and tents from public spaces with little or no notice and no referrals to shelter or other services.
The rule was designed to guarantee 72 hours’ notice and a referral to shelter before the city sweeps an encampment. But it contains a loophole previous mayors have exploited to sweep people from place to place for years. The rule allows sweeps with no notice or offer of shelter or services if an encampment constitutes a hazard or “obstruction”—a term Durkan and Harrell both interpreted broadly to include anyone located on public property. Editing this legislation to define “hazards” and “obstructions” narrowly will reduce the number of pointless sweeps, like the ones that have been going on for months Ballard, and make it less common for encampment residents to lose everything, including contact with their case managers, when they have to move. Pitching a tent in the middle of a heavily used playfield is an obvious obstruction, while sleeping in a secluded area of a public park obstructs nothing.
Homelessness will be a defining issue of Wilson’s tenure, so this is just one of many necessary steps. We think it’s a prerequisite for ending the kind of indiscriminate sweeps Wilson campaigned against.—ECB
10. Transit Validation
Just as big employers subsidize ORCA cards, so should big destinations: Lumen Field. T-Mobile Park. Climate Pledge Arena. Benaroya Hall. McCaw Hall. All these spots—particularly Benaroya, which is literally a stop on the Link light rail line—should zap a discount back into your ORCA card when they scan your ticket. (Three cheers to Pacific Science Center, one institution that already does a version of this. And I know Climate Pledge has its own Kraken app that includes free transit, but it’s the opposite of user-friendly and should just be rolled in with the ORCA pass).
As her first agenda item as a Sound Transit board member, Mayor Wilson, the former Transit Riders Union leader, should champion a program to subsidize rides to our city’s cultural destinations. —JF
11. Free the street vendors!
The city and county have made a very big deal recently about their efforts to crack down on street food vendors who lack the proper permits, but haven’t exactly made our city a hospitable place for licensed food vendors to operate legally in the first place. The city currently requires food trucks and street vendors to navigate a byzantine maze of rules and restrictions. For example, if you want to sell food near a residential area or public park, that requires a whole secondary approval process. This approach treats vendors like industrial polluters that should be kept away from people and each other rather than amenities that improve neighborhoods and commercial districts.
Launch a full assessment of the city’s street vending rules and get rid of unnecessary red tape that keeps people in most parts of Seattle from enjoying tacos, soft serve, kebabs, and all other kinds of portable food. The people want to eat! —ECB
12. The Bench Agenda
You know how the former Bloomberg administration in NYC is famous for building more than 300 miles of bike lanes? The Wilson administration should seek a similar legacy by flooding Seattle with benches. Start with a bench at every bus stop, complete with shelter to dovetail with the shade zones. But we also need benches dotting parks, in commercial hubs, in residential areas. And no—correlation fallacy!—benches don’t increase the homeless population. Homelessness already exists. Benches can simply make it more visible. Giving homeless people a place to rest isn’t such a bad thing. —JF
13. Defund (parts of) the Police
Wilson’s detractors, including the $1.8 million pro-Harrell PAC, tried to claim she plans to defund the police (and is responsible for the entire police defunding movement), an absurd but inflammatory claim that probably alarmed some people into supporting the incumbent. In a recent interview with Seattle Nice, Wilson reiterated that she supports hiring more officers and has no interest in defunding the police themselves, but is open to looking closely at spending on nonessential functions.
Our proposal, to paraphrase centrist city council members elected in 2023: Audit the fucking police budget (that is, examine discretionary spending and recent adds), and pare back spending on stuff we don’t need and that is actively harming communities.
One easy target: SPD’s Real Time Crime Center and surveillance cameras, which, under Harrell, have begun to proliferate in neighborhoods across the city. Harrell and SPD tried to ease civil liberties concerns by claiming it’s essentially impossible for the federal government to get hold of footage from the 24/7 cameras. But all the Trump Administration really needs is a subpoena—or a cop with access to the footage and an axe to grind against immigrants or people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care.
Police surveillance cameras have been around for decades, and there’s little evidence that they make a meaningful impact on crime. The cops dispute this, as do Harrell and other pro-surveillance officials around the country. But even if the cameras do occasionally provide evidence that SPD couldn’t get another way (such as the vast network of private cameras they’ve always used in investigations), that isn’t a worthwhile tradeoff for expanding surveillance in the age of Trump. We don’t have to build the panopticon! —ECB
14. Hang Out with State Sen. Jessica Bateman
Mayor Wilson: As you fill up your calendar with important get-to-know-you meetings, please set aside some time to meet with Olympia’s pro-housing, pro-density, pro-city rock star state Sen. Jessica Bateman (D-22). Bateman, of course, is the mastermind behind HB 1110, which forced foot-dragging cities like Seattle to allow four-unit multi-family housing (up to six-units if two of the units are affordable) anywhere single-family housing is allowed.
Mayor Harrell spent his time in quibblingobstructionismwith 1110. Our suggestion to make Bateman your besty is our way of telling you to support rather than subvert the state’s progressive housing agenda, which has lapped Seattle’s progress toward density over the last decade.
Word is the upcoming session will come with pro-housing ideas like a land value tax, which would target low and underused properties like parking lots, prompting land owners to do more useful things like build housing. Seattle should be at the forefront supporting these efforts. —JF
That’s it for our Wilsonian 14 Points. Now, here are some low-hanging quick hits:
Tax new pickleball facilities to expand public access to youth sports.
Instead of pouring millions into “graffiti rangers” and other nonsense, create a fund that provides small grants to business owners for removing graffiti on their property.
Figure out this scooter and e-bike stuff—you can start by banning Class 2 e-bikes with throttles, which are just small electric motorcycles, from shared trails used by cyclists and pedestrians. (Washington Bikes is working at the state level to regulate higher-powered “e-motos,” which can go faster than the speediest e-bikes.)
Seize the opportunity (instead of “grabbing the ball”): Don’t speak in sports metaphors.
Mayor Bruce Harrell announces an executive order at City Hall earlier this month.
By Erica C. Barnett
As the council takes up Mayor Bruce Harrell’s election-year budget, they could choose to heed their own staff’s warnings and make cautious, fiscally prudent choices about the future—something the cohort of centrists elected in 2023 promised would be a priority as they ran on promises to “audit the budget.”
Instead, an early list of proposed council amendments suggests they plan to pile tens of millions in new spending on top of the $53 million in new, mostly ongoing obligations the mayor has already proposed, exacerbating what was already a steep fiscal cliff that the next mayor will have to fix.
As we reported earlier this month, the council’s own staff called Harrell’s budget plan “inherently unsustainable” because it relies heavily on budget tricks to remain balanced for 2026, tumbling immediately into nine-figure deficits in 2027 and beyond.
These tricks include relying on a one-time $141 million fund balance from 2025; funding long-term needs, like food assistance for people losing federal benefits, with one-time resources; and assuming a $10 million “underspend” every year in the future, allowing the mayor’s budget team to chop $10 million off each year’s expenditures automatically without actually making cuts.
In addition, the $80 million reparations plan Harrell hyped earlier this year—describing his proposal as new spending to help the descendants of enslaved Black Americans buy or rent homes in Seattle—is unfunded. The budget for Harrell’s proposal “does not provide new funding for this purpose,” a staff memo says, noting that the current plan calls for “the same dollar [to] be used to satisfy multiple commitments.”
This allows Harrell to claim he has funded reparations without actually spending any new dollars on this purpose—a neat budget trick if the only goal is to avoid adding new spending to a precariously balanced budget, but one that may not produce any actual new programs to help Black Seattle residents whose families were robbed of potential wealth as the result of redlining, gentrification, and displacement.
Harrell’s budget also treats levies and taxes that were passed for specific purposes—including the voter-approved Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy, the JumpStart payroll tax on big businesses, and the sweetened beverage tax—as all-purpose revenue sources that can be used to backfill shortfalls created, in part, by excess spending and a lack of fiscal restraint.
Last year, the budget added around $100 million in new spending, largely for programs that require ongoing funds, like the expansion of the city’s encampment removal and graffiti removal teams. Harrell’s new 2026 budget, which is supposed to include only minor tweaks to the 2026-2026 biennial budget the city adopted last year, piles on $53 million more in new spending compared to the 2026 budget adopted last year, much of it ongoing.
These 2026 additions include another expansion of the sweeps team, another expansion of the graffiti team, and an expansion of CCTV police surveillance into Capitol Hill and the Stadium District—plus $26 million to fund 86 net new officers at a rate of more $300,000 per officer.
The budget also includes revenues from a new “public safety” sales tax increase and an increase in the business and occupation tax that will have to be approved by voters in November.
The long-term impacts of Harrell’s budget could be significant, whether he’s reelected or not. Questions the council could choose to tackle head-on this year—but, based on their own proposals to swell the budget further, probably won’t—include: Should the city keep expanding politicians’ pet programs every year, and if so, should this new spending be offset with commensurate cuts? Should the police department be allowed to keep the details of how it spends tax dollars under wraps, or should the council’s demands to “audit the budget” apply to the half-billion-dollar department? Is it politically sustainable for elected officials to treat taxes and levies passed for specific purposes as all-purpose slush funds?
The council hasn’t really taken up those questions. Instead, for the last couple of weeks, they’ve focused on small-picture stuff—adding noise-activated cameras to a street in West Seattle where racing is common, for instance—and proposing amendments to add more new long-term spending to the budget.
As the council launches into its annual amendment process, here are some elements of this year’s budget I’ll be paying attention to.
More Money for Seattle Police
Harrell’s proposed 2026 budget is balanced, as required by law, but falls into an immediate $140 million deficit in 2027 that rises, under the current projection, to a staggering $374 million by 2029—and that number doesn’t account for “one-time” new spending that will inevitably become permanent.
Part of the future budget gap comes from new spending on the Seattle Police Department: Harrell’s budget increases SPD’s budget by $35 million next year, which represents a $15 million increase over to the 2026 budget the city just adopted last year. That new funding includes $24 million to hire and train 169 new officers (for a projected net increase of 86 new officers, counted against officers who leave next year). That price tag will grow to $34 million in 2027 and continue to increase as new recruits—whose new starting salary is $118,000, with an automatic bump to $126,000 after six months—get raises.
Additionally, SPD’s budget calls for almost a million dollars in ongoing costs, some of that funded with the JumpStart payroll tax that was originally earmarked for affordable housing, to expand police surveillance cameras into Capitol Hill and the Stadium District.
Council members, who raised numerous, detailed questions about new spending in other departments (the Office of Planning and Community Development’s Equitable Development Initiative came in for line-item-level scrutiny by Councilmember Maritza Rivera), had few questions about SPD’s expansion when the department presented its budget earlier this month.
In fact, several councilmembers took the time to preemptively promise that they wouldn’t even consider reducing SPD’s budget to help address the growing budget deficit. “I recognize there may be temptations to go after public safety dollars, and specifically SPD dollars, but that’s penny wise, pound foolish,” public safety committee chair Bob Kettle said.
Councilmember Rob Saka agreed with Kettle that the city should exempt SPD from budget scrutiny in the interest of hiring more cops. “I know there are some conversations around what this quote, unquote ‘slate’ of council members committed to doing about budget and reforms and audits, but one thing that I think this slate was elected to was to improve public safety and specifically hire more officers,” Saka said. “Data doesn’t lie, so it’s great, encouraging news, but we’re also at a fairly fragile state as well. We need to continue this momentum in this sustained effort over time.”
Not everyone agreed that fiscal responsibility and hiring more officers are mutually exclusive goals. Councilmember Alexis MercedesRinck, for instance, wondered aloud why the department insists they have no money to hire a coordinator for the department’s “30 by 30” program work—part of SPD’s commitment to have a 30 percent female recruit class by 2030. (Currently, that number is under 9 percent—less than half the national average). SPD was supposed to hire the coordinator this year using unspent funds for vacant position, but the department said had to repurpose the money as “civilian salary savings to balance the budget”; next year, they plan to use the funds intended for the position “to meet budget reduction targets.”
“This is serious,” Rinck said. “We talk about ‘culture issues’ within the department, but what we’re doing is alluding to the very real allegations and lawsuits by women officers about mistreatment and misogyny within the department. The money is there, and the department needs to take this work seriously, and the funding is there to do this work. I mean, the budget that we’re talking about is now nearly half a billion dollars.”
Asked at a recent press conference about progress on SPD’s commitment to having a 30 percent female recruit class by 2030 (part of the national “30 by 30” initiative), Barnes called 30 by 30 “a goal, not a plan” and said SPD was looking at things like child care and flexible assignments for women raising children. He also noted that the city where he was previously police chief, Madison, WI, started its own efforts to hire more women in 1974 and recently reached 28 percent, “so it’s going to take some time.”
For the second year in a row, SPD estimates that it will use less overtime than it has in previous years, saving almost a million dollars. Historically, SPD has asked for more money for overtime through the city’s supplemental budget process later in the year. “Should SPD continue to spend at a rate of 500,000 [overtime]hours per year, then the difference of 50,000 hours would translate into a budget-spending gap of $5.5 million,” the central staff memo notes. Police Chief Shon Barnes, the memo continues, has “indicated that he does not expect that new officer hires will [reduce] overtime spending in the near term” because SPD is spending more money on “special projects.”
The proposed budget also permanently cuts $2.8 million in spending on parking enforcement officers, who SPD has had trouble hiring. Actually hiring people to fill those positions would increase city revenues by about $85,000 per hire, the staff memo notes, so the apparent savings really represent a financial loss to the city.
Starving future density, feeding the AI bubble
When the council finally adopted “Phase 1” of Mayor Harrell’s very belated Comprehensive Plan proposal, they decided to delay significant changes, including proposals from Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck to restore some of the higher-density “neighborhood centers” Harrell removed from his plan, until later. As part of this compromise, they passed a “docketing resolution” that includes the expanded neighborhood centers and a number of other amendments the council decided to put off until later.
Harrell’s budget proposes eliminating one of two existing long-range planning positions at the city’s Office of Planning and Development, which happens to be currently unfilled. That means that just one person would be available to do all of OPCD’s long-range planning work, which the council greatly expanded by adding the new comprehensive plan work to the department’s workload.
As a staff memo notes, the work outlined by the docketing resolution is “on top of an existing work program that includes rezoning all neighborhood centers, urban and regional center expansion areas, and frequent transit corridors, and developing proposals to major transit areas and other areas inside existing regional and urban centers.” The cut saves the city less than $200,000, and could force the city’s planning department to deprioritize work on new neighborhood centers, among all the other comprehensive plan changes in the resolution.
At the same time, Harrell’s budget proposes spending $800,000 as an initial investment in AI software that will purportedly help the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections streamline the permitting process for development by using chatbots for troubleshooting and customer service and handing some work currently done by humans over to AI. Rinck has proposed a budget amendment that would ask the city’s IT department to report periodically on the city’s use of AI.
The initial cost for the software Harrell wants to buy is $500,000, with a current annual subscription cost of $250,000. SDCI, which is funded through permitting fees, has already seen layoffs due to funding cuts as the construction market has slowed, so the additional spending on AI would exacerbate the department’s ongoing funding shortfall.
Seattle Department of Transportation expansion focuses on eliminating graffiti, taco trucks, and tents
Harrell’s budget reflects his top priorities, which include moving homeless people and drug users out of downtown Seattle and eliminating graffiti. In keeping with those priorities, the budget creates an eyebrow-raising 16 new positions in SDOT for “right-of-way cleaning” and “restoration” as part of Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, along with five new positions for graffiti removal. Overall, Harrell’s budget brings the city’s annual expenditures for graffiti abatement to $6.1 million, representing 22 full-time staff devoted to this purpose.
In addition, the proposed budget adds six new positions to beef up permit enforcement, including three street use inspectors, two people to inspect street vendors and shut them down if they don’t have proper licenses, and one person to augment the city’s Joint Enforcement Team, a task force that drops in on nightlife businesses and issues citations. (The add would allow the JET to inspect nightclubs 50 times a year instead of the current 18). There’s also an additional $1.8 in next year’s SDOT budget “to support FIFA World Cup operations.”
Like other departments that have nothing to do with affordable housing, green jobs, and equitable development—the three purposes for which the JumpStart progressive payroll tax was initially earmarked—SDOT will dip into JumpStart to help pay for the 32.5 new positions in Harrell’s budget for the department.
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For the first time since the creation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which was created to consolidate all of the region’s homeless services in one agency, the city is proposing to create a new program—the Community Solutions Initiative, led by the Downtown Seattle Association in partnership with the nonprofit Purpose Dignity Action—that would operated be entirely outside the KCRHA.
That’s in keeping with Harrell’s earlier moves to take over outreach and homelessness prevention programs that had been KCRHA’s purview (and his generally bellicose approach to the struggling homelessness authority). But by moving programs into the city’s Human Services Department on a one-off basis, Harrell’s budget goes against the concept of a regional approach—and, as a staff memo notes, gives a shelter contract to a business group, DSA, “with no previous experience” responding to unsheltered homelessness.
The budget also includes funding for about 300 new shelter beds over the next two years. Council staff identified a couple of major issues with that funding. First, while Harrell’s budget calls for 150 new beds next year, the budget only includes enough funding to operate those shelters for three months, meaning that no new shelter beds would open until the final quarter of 2026. Second, there’s no plan to keep those beds open, or fund an additional 155 beds Harrell has said his administration would open in 2027, beyond those three months. It’s basically an unfunded plan.
The Community Solutions Initiative, meanwhile, would be paid for with one-time funding that would disappear in 2027, which is not how shelter and housing navigation programs for homeless Seattle residents are ordinarily funded. “It seems unrealistic to stand up a pilot, enroll people in shelter or housing and get every person enrolled in the pilot stably housed all within one year,” the staff memo observes.
This kind of unrealistic expectation, in fact, is one thing that helped doom a similar public-private partnership run by the KCRHA called Partnership for Zero, which also used one-time funding in an attempt to rapidly eliminate visible homelessness downtown within one year. The program, which Harrell supported, shut down the year after it launched without accomplishing its goals.
Budget tricks and
I mentioned earlier that Harrell’s still-vague housing reparations proposal could be achieved by double- and triple-counting programs that already exist. Here’s how the staff memo describes the proposal: “The Executive [Harrell] anticipates the same dollar could be used to satisfy multiple commitments. For example, funding for a homeownership project could help meet overall production goals and be counted as an Anti-Displacement and Reparations Housing Fund project.”
This double- or triple-counting could help city leaders avoid touch choices and preserve existing programs that receive JumpStart funds through the Office of Housing.
But OH faces a deeper problem: Right now, the voter-approved Housing Levy is not on track to pay for existing commitments. Put another way, in order to meet the housing production targets in the levy, OH will need an additional $327 million from JumpStart between 2026 and 2030, which “substantially impacts the amount of [payroll expense tax] that is available for other uses,” according to a staff memo.
Those other uses include operating costs for existing buildings, salary increases for service providers in city-funded housing, and homeownership programs. They also all the new programs unrelated to housing for which Harrell’s budget taps the JumpStart tax, including police surveillance cameras, Seattle Fire Department support during the FIFA games, “preventative security” for businesses, and the aforementioned expansion of street cleaning and “restoration” downtown.
JumpStart isn’t the only tax city officials plan to raid to backfill the general fund. Harrell’s budget also uses revenues from the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise levy and the tax on sugary soda to supplant general-fund spending, freeing up money for other purposes. And the new sales tax increase for public safety, passed by the council before the budget so it can go into effect first thing next year, will be half general fund backfill right out of the gate—a letdown for anyone who hoped a regressive new tax would serve as more than another slush fund.
All three of these taxes—JumpStart, the levy, and the soda tax—were originally passed with specific spending plans related to the tax itself. JumpStart was earmarked for programs benefiting people affected by growing inequality brought on by the tech boom. The FEPP levy paid for new preschool, education, and eventually college programs. And the soda tax was supposed to go to programs that improved access to healthy food in neighborhoods where soda is more accessible than fresh fruit and vegetables.
The council passed laws restricting the use of both JumpStart and the soda tax after Mayor Jenny Durkan repurposed each tax to backfill the general fund. A new council overturned the spending restrictions on JumpStart last year, and will have to do the same thing for the sweetened beverage tax to make Harrell’s budget pencil. The budget also assumes voters will pass a new business and occupation tax in November, allowing Harrell to use most of the $81 million in anticipated revenues—$51 million— to backfill existing general fund spending.
These budget tricks will allow the mayor and council to balance the budget while continuing their annual spending spree, but it sets the city up for major cuts in the future if the economy takes a turn for the worse. They also establish a precedent of asking voters to essentially approve new slush funds that can be used for any purpose—something that may eventually become a hard sell, even in pro-tax Seattle.
The city’s revenue from local sales taxes comes largely from construction and trade, not from people spending money here.
By Erica C. Barnett
On Wednesday, the city council’s budget committee got briefed on the latest bad news for upcoming city budgets: Revenues are expected to come in lower than anticipated over the next two years, forcing the city to consider substantial budget cuts. The shortfall is the result of numerous small and large revenue reductions, but the biggest change is a decline in projected revenues from the JumpStart tax, which is now expected to produce $167 million less over the next two years than previously assumed.
Under the original JumpStart law, these funds would have gone to a specific list of spending priorities that were outside the general fund; last year, the council codified what had become a regular practice and passed a law saying JumpStart can be used for any purpose, so shortfalls can now have a direct impact on basic city services. The new numbers also include shortfalls in sales tax revenues, business and occupation taxes, parking meter revenues, and utility taxes, among lots of other items marked by red ink in the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council’s presentation.
During the largely grim presentation, Councilmember Rob Saka sought reasons for optimism. First, he said that even though revenues from court fines have been declining, his committee just approved new speed cameras in school zones and is planning to add several automated speed cameras in locations outside school zones in the near future, which, he said, should improve the outlook. The 2025-2026 budget the council adopted last year, however, already includes projected revenues from the new school-zone cameras—$4.2 million, against $1.2 million in new spending to get the cameras up and running.
Still looking for the bright side, Saka wanted to know what kind of new revenues the city expects to bring in from the FIFA World Club Cup in 2025 and the FIFA World Cup in 2026. Won’t those big events help line the city’s bank accounts in ways the revenue forecasts don’t account for? Not exactly, council central staff director Ben Noble responded.
The huge economic bump FIFA boosters are projecting—supposedly $500 million or more across the two World Cup years—is a budget trick that includes things like hotel rooms that would already be sold out at the height of summer anyway. “We’re going to see less of a bump than we might then you might otherwise imagine, because we’re plenty busy in the summer all the time,” Noble said. “I see those numbers, and as an economist, they bother me a little bit, because they’re they’re usually quoted out of that important context.”
Also, all the admissions taxes for World Cup events will go to the county, not the city, so the main boost to city revenues will be from sales taxes from visitors, including international visitors, who would not otherwise have come to Seattle in the summer.
Saka tried a final time: What about cruises and other types of tourism? The Port of Seattle, Saka said, “anticipates this to be the busiest crew season ever in Seattle history. … On the tourism sector, with respect to the cruise industry next year, what other kind of signature, marquee events or opportunities could help drive tourism here in Seattle, all the tomfoolery outside of Seattle notwithstanding?”
But Economic Revenue Forecast Council director Jan Duras only offered more bad news: “When it comes to that record-breaking cruise season, that was, again, the prediction that was made more than two weeks ago, before the recent turmoil in the financial markets, before all the potential impacts on cancelation that Canadian citizens might consider. … If people see their savings shrink, if they are worried about the future, they’re probably less likely to book a cruise ship vacation. They are less likely to travel. They might reconsider their plans.”
Saka wasn’t the only one looking for some good news amid the gloom. Dan Strauss also offered, hopefully, that it’s possible the city hasn’t accounted for all the people who will return to the office five days a week and start spending more money during the day. “I was supposed to bring my lunch today, and I forgot, so we’ll have a little bit more sales tax revenue in the buckets for today,” Strauss joked.
Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who reportedly plans to propose a local progressive revenue package before the city starts its annual budget process, countered her colleagues’ attempts at optimism by saying the council is “going to be responsible for crafting a budget in what might be the most worst economic storm in our lifetime, and … we also need to be honest that tightening the belt and coordinating with our regional partners isn’t going to close a gap this big. … And so looking forward, [we should be] looking at our options for being able to raise progressive revenue to protect our investments in critical city services.”
Seattle’s trade-based economy operates like a beating heart at the center of a regional circulatory system that pumps sustainable family-wage jobs, growth opportunities, and economic prosperity into the city as commerce flows out across the US, from Edgar Martinez Way in Seattle all the way to Boston.
The arteries of this system are freight mobility corridors that facilitate ingress and egress around Seattle’s bustling port district. This system will be compromised if the Seattle City Council approves a bill that would allow housing development in the midst of incompatible industrial land uses. The upzoning effort threatens to erode our local maritime economy and would put future residents in harm’s way.
Local governments have invested billions of dollars into our unique deep-water ports, rail corridors, and road infrastructure to ensure transportation networks operate efficiently to supply dozens of trade-dependent sectors, both large and small, with reliable freight transport to and from the Port of Seattle. Our status as a leader in international trade was made possible thanks to forward-thinking industrial land-use policies, which preserve industrial land for a diverse array of industrial uses.
The legislation the council is considering would lift the prohibition on residential properties development within 200 feet of designated Major Truck Streets in the “Stadium Transition Area Overlay District,” (STAOD) which comprises several blocks of land around the SODO arenas. Permanent residents will send more traffic into a small area, with limited transportation capacity, that is already overcrowded during regular stadium events.
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City leaders are on the cusp of putting 58,400 jobs across Washington state at risk—including on the Seattle waterfront. Marine cargo operations along the waterfront create $4.5 billion in annual business output, $1.5 billion in labor outcome, while supporting an additional 30,600 secondary jobs.
Pinching freight thoroughfares in Seattle would impair our state’s thriving agriculture producers as well. Washington’s potato industry, as an example, has the highest yield in the nation—producing 93 million pounds annually. Washington potatoes flow through the Port to major export markets like Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. This activity produces an economic benefit to our state of more than $7.3 billion , and the production supply chains support approximately 32,000 direct jobs.
Although industrially zoned lands make up only 12 percent of the city’s total land, they contribute about 30 percent of the city’s annual tax revenue. It’s clear that maximizing maritime uses in these areas pays off. Port jobs provide sustainable economic benefits that have supported family-wage careers across generations. Maritime workers can still afford to live in the city where they work—an increasingly rare quality in Seattle’s downtown core.
City leaders must also consider the urgent public health and safety issues that would face future residents seeking affordable housing in SODO. In 2022, Seattle’s Industrial & Maritime Strategy Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) outlined potential harms that could result from siting housing in areas that are adjacent to maritime industrial lands.
The EIS explicitly highlights Seattle’s history of redlining as a motivating framework for the analysis, noting the detrimental impacts of prejudicial land-use policymaking on city residents over time. The SODO subarea where the city is now contemplating residential development is rated lowest on the city’s “Access to Opportunity Index.” By moving forward with this bill, city leaders would be doubling down on residential land use policies that have already failed low-income communities and communities of color.
As the city decides whether to place affordable housing next to a very busy working waterfront, they must be clear-eyed about the significant risks that will face future tenants. Permanent SODO residents would be placed right in the middle of inhospitable maritime industrial land uses. SODO is one of the hottest areas of the city with constant noise and light pollution, complete with a 24-hour average decibel rating that exceeds federal standards for residential noise levels. The proposed development would house residents on top of an earthquake liquefaction zone that could be subject to catastrophic collapse when disaster strikes.
Existing maritime economies and future SODO tenants can’t afford the high-risk tradeoffs inherent in this proposal for the stadium overlay district. Fortunately, city leaders can look to the negotiated alternative that stakeholders, including land developers, agreed on in 2023. Opportunities for mixed-use development in Seattle could be found in the Georgetown neighborhood, where an affordable “makers district” could thrive without similar impacts on residents, or to local maritime operations.
As family-wage jobs and affordable housing opportunities in Seattle continue to contract, we need legislation that invests in the long-term wellbeing of all city residents, not just a few wealthy landowners in SODO. This proposal is a bad deal for Seattle’s working families, and our thriving maritime industry. It risks the viability of scarce maritime industrial lands that we cannot afford to lose.
Lars Turner is the International Secretary-Treasurer of the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, AFL-CIO. Gabriel Prawl is the President of the Seattle Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Chris Voigt is the Executive Director of the Washington State Potato Commission
By Josh Feit
Here’s something I found even more concerning. I got French Revolution vibes reading the DSA’s descriptions of who’s keeping downtown flush.
